GOOD FRIDAY – THE CHURCH MOURNS BECAUSE HER LORD IS DEAD A DAY DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER DAY There is surely no other moment in the year when the Church succeeds in producing the right impression so perfectly as she does in the service of Good Friday. The very strangeness of the rites, utterly unlike any others, gives us at once the feeling that this is a day different from any other day. A SENSE OF DESOLATION, OF MOURNING That little procession coming to the altar in dead silence, the prostration before the altar, then the lessons, the series of collects with their strange chant, all this produces a sense of desolation, of mourning, such as no other service in the year approaches. Today the most ignorant observer who enters a Catholic church can see that the Church mourns because her Lord is dead. THE ASSOCIATION OF LONG CENTURIES Then comes the worship of the cross, so full of meaning today, and the one gleam of light in the dark service, as we bring the Sanctissimum back to the...